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Resources updated between Monday, July 10, 2017 and Sunday, July 16, 2017

July 14, 2017

The scene of a previous terror attack in Jerusalem (File photo)

An infant girl was among three people injured in a firebomb attack in Jerusalem on Friday, hours after two Israeli police officers were killed in an attack by three Israeli-Arab assailants on the Temple Mount.

The Molotov cocktail was thrown at a family traveling in a community security vehicle in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, right near the Mount of Olives.

Paramedics who rushed to the scene treated the baby and the two adults for smoke inhalation. The child was then transported to Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center in Jerusalem.

Police launched a search for the perpetrator or perpetrators.

Earlier Friday, three Arab Israeli terrorists opened fire on a group of police officers standing just outside the Temple Mount compound near the Old City's Lions Gate. Two cops were killed in the attack, and a third suffered light injuries.

The victims were identified as Haiel Sitawe, 30, and Kamil Shnaan, 22, both from Druze villages in northern Israel.

Cameroon took control of oil-rich Bakassi in 2008 after an International Court of Justice ruling, ending years of border skirmishes.

Survivors of the attack have been arriving back in Nigeria with injuries, reports the BBC's Naziru Mikailu in the capital, Abuja.

Nigeria's lower house of parliament resolved that it will investigate the reports in view of the 2005 Green Tea agreement between the two countries, to protect the citizens of the ceded areas from harm.

A five-year UN-backed transition period was put in place exempting the area's residents, many of them Nigerian fishermen, from paying tax.

Two suicide bombers killed at least 12 people and wounded over 40 others in a small town in northern Cameroon near the Nigerian border late on Wednesday, a senior army source and a local official told Reuters.

"There were 14 deaths, including the two suicide bombers, and 42 wounded," said an army colonel responsible for evacuating the wounded who asked to remain anonymous. "The attack was perpetrated by one suicide bomber, and the other was shot dead."

The attack was carried out by two women who walked into a busy area in the center of Waza, five miles (8 km) from the Nigerian border, said Midjiyawa Bakari, the governor for the Far North region where the attack took place. He said that 13 had been killed and 43 wounded. A baby was among the dead, he said.

Many were seriously wounded and were flown to nearby hospitals, he said.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but the region has been a frequent target of Boko Haram militants in their eight-year bid to carve out an Islamic caliphate beyond Nigeria.

Last month, nine were killed in the town of Kolofata when two children carrying explosives blew themselves up near a camp housing people displaced by Boko Haram violence.

In eight years, Boko Haram attacks have killed more than 20,000 people in the Lake Chad region, including Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger and, according to the latest U.N. refugee agency figures, displaced 2.7 million.

Brutal North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is shipping tens of thousands of impoverished citizens to Russia for the hard currency his cash-strapped regime desperately needs, Fox News has found.

Alarmed human rights groups say the North Korea workers in Russia are little more than slaves, subjected to everything from cruel and violent acts to ruthless exploitation at the hands of corrupt officials, while being forced to turn over large chunks of their pay to the North Korean government.

A report issued earlier this year by the Seoul-based Data Base Center for North Korean Human Rights estimates that about 50,000 North Korean laborers are working low-paying jobs in Russia. They send at least $120 million every year to the regime in Pyongyang.

"The North Korean government maintains strict controls over their workers' profits, in some cases probably taking 90 percent of their wages," Scott Synder, director of the Program on U.S.-Korea Policy at the Council of Foreign Relations, told Fox News. "This is an issue that has been going on under the radar for a long time."

International sanctions have crippled North Korea's economy. The country produces few goods suitable for export. Kim needs money any way he can get it.

North Koreans helped construct a new soccer stadium in St. Petersburg. They also helped build a luxury apartment complex in Moscow.

The North Korean workers toil under terribly harsh conditions. A North Korean working on the soccer project was killed. Two North Korean laborers were found dead in June at a decrepit hostel near the Moscow apartment building site.

For years North Korean laborers have worked at remote Russian logging camps, which has brought to mind the brutal Soviet-era Gulag system.

Even so many North Korean laborers are willing to pay bribes to be sent to Russia given the dire economic and political situation at home.

The U.S. State Department issued a report on human trafficking last month that concluded that North Korean workers in Russia had been subjected to "exploitative labor conditions characteristic of trafficking cases such as withholding of identity documents, non-payment for services rendered, physical abuse, lack of safety measures, or extremely poor living conditions."

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has proposed new sanctions to deal with the problem.

"Secretary Tillerson has called on all countries to fully implement all U.N. Security Council resolutions, sever or downgrade diplomatic relations, and isolate [North Korea] financially, including through new sanctions, severing trade relationships, expelling guest workers, and banning imports from North Korean," a State Department official told Fox News.

One reason for making such resolutions international is because North Korean laborers work in other countries besides Russia. China uses large numbers of them, and Qatar has North Korean laborers helping build its World Cup stadium.

Among the exploited North Korean workers are painters sent to the Pacific Ocean port of Vladivostok. Still, they have it little better than the North Koreans working in the Russian logging camps.

The boss of a decorating company in Vladivostok told the New York Times recently that minders from the Workers' Party of Korea, the ruling party in Pyongyang, will confiscate half or more of a laborer's monthly salary. He said a construction crew boss will take another 20 percent.

The corruption has apparently only increased in the last 10 years as the monthly pay rate for the laborers has increased from about 17,000 rubles, around $283, to 50,000 rubles, or about $841, according to the report.

"They don't take holidays. They eat, work and sleep and nothing else. And they don't sleep much," the Russian boss said. "They are basically in the situation of slaves."

He was reluctant to give the Times his name for fear the laborers would be punished by Workers' Party officials.

Experts question why the human trafficking of North Koreans to Russia hasn't drawn as much attention on the international stage as sex trafficking and other forms of human trafficking.

"It's very much analogous to any other type of trafficking situation across the world," Snyder said. "Sex trafficking is done by shadowy, illegal organizations, but here we're talking about state entities carrying out the trafficking. This really speaks to the nature of these regimes."

Kamil Shnaan, left, and Haiel Sitawe, right, the police officers killed in the terror attack next to the Temple Mount complex in Jerusalem on July 14, 2017

Israeli police released further details regarding the officers who were involved in stopping the terror attack on Friday at Temple Mount and confirmed that two had been killed and two wounded.

The slain officers are Hail Stawi, 30, from Maghar and Kamil Shanan, 22, from Hurfeish, both in northern Israel. Officer Shanan leaves behind a three-week old child, and was the son of former Israeli Druse Knesset member Shakib Shanan. He was recruited into the Israel Police's Temple Mount unit in 2012.

Shanan joined the police as part of his national service and signed on as a career officer seven months ago. Funerals will be held in the officers' hometowns on Friday.

The wounded officers are Nziya Kablan from Beit Jann and Nasser Hiab from Zarzir.

The officers were shot at by terrorists who used Carlo (home-made) rifles. Israeli media reported that one of the terrorists, who was considered to be already neutralized, was able to get to his feet and attempted to assault the officers and was then shot and killed.

The attack, which took place shorty after 7:00 a.m., is the second attack at Jerusalem's Old City within the past month and resulted in the closure of the Temple Mount to Muslim worshipers on Friday.

Israeli officials from across the political spectrum came together on social media to mourn the losses of the policemen. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent his condolences to the families in the name of all Israelis on his accounts.

Zionist Union lawmakers pointed out that Shanan was the son of former Labor MK Shakib Shanan. "One of the policemen that was murdered in the horrible terrorist attack was the son of a friend," MK Merav Michaeli (Zionist Union) tweeted.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett said: "The Jewish people are connected in a covenant of life with our Druse brothers." He changed his avatar on twitter to a photo of the Israeli and Druse flags.

The police said in a statement that Thursday's attack was an "exceptional and extreme" incident. "Shooting at the Temple Mount is serious and sensitive event, which is significant on the political and international level and will be dealt with accordingly," police said.

Police said the Temple Mount will remain closed for an undisclosed amount of time until the conclusion of an investigation into the incident and after searches of the area.

Afghan police have arrested members of a human trafficking ring they say kidnapped 25 children and tried to smuggle them into Pakistan, where they were to be trained as suicide bombers for the Afghan Taliban.

At least one of the children who was to be trained as a suicide bomber was 4, a regional governor said, and they may have been drugged as well.

Police arrested four alleged traffickers transporting the children in two vans during a security operation in the southeastern province of Ghazni, near the border with Pakistan, on July 9.

Their final destination was the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, where the leadership of the Afghan Taliban is believed to be based, officials said.

The incident came as human rights organizations have warned that the Taliban have been recruiting, training, and deploying children for military operations including suicide bombing missions and the planting of improvised explosive devices.

Ghazni Governor Abdul Karim Mateen said the children were aged between 4 and 14. He said they were currently housed in an orphanage in the provincial capital, and they appeared to have been given drugs or some other substances by their abductors.

"The children have received medical checkups and treatment," Mateen told RFE/RL "They were given substances [by the traffickers] that has made them dizzy and confused. They have lost their senses."

Mateen said he believed the children were all Ghazni residents, although he said police were still trying to locate their families and relatives.

Mateen said the four people were in police custody and will be prosecuted. He gave no further information.

Fahim Amerkhail, the spokesman for Ghazni's police chief, said the children were being taken to Quetta to perform "terrorist activities."

The children had been drugged and were found in a "bad physical and psychological state," Amerkhail said. He said many of them were orphans.

The security operation that rescued the children on July 9 occurred in the Qarabagh and Ab Band districts of Ghazni, which is largely controlled by the Taliban.

The Taliban have been accused of recruiting and using children as fighters since the 1990s.

In a February 2016 report, Human Rights Watch said the Taliban were expanding their recruitment of children, particularly in the country's north where the militants have succeeded in expanding their power.

The rights group said in the northern Kunduz Province, the Taliban were using religious schools known as madrasahs to recruit children, often against their parents' wishes. In the Kunduz cases that the group investigated, the children were lured into the schools and then unable to leave.

Patricia Gossman, a senior researcher on Afghanistan at Human Rights Watch, said the organization has not come across any cases of kidnapping children with the aim of making them suicide bombers. But she slammed the Taliban for targeting children in general.

"The Taliban's strategy to recruit children as fighters is as cruel as it is unlawful," she said. "Afghan children should never be used as cannon fodder by any armed force."

Following a pause in executions during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, executions in Iran have dramatically increased since Saturday July 1.

In the past twelve days, Iran Human Rights has reported on 56 executions carried out in Iran. 31 of the 56 prisoners were reportedly hanged on drug related charges. Only seven of the 56 executions were reported by official Iranian sources, including the Judiciary and state-run media.

Iran Human Rights considers the volume of executions in Iran inhumane and calls for their immediate halt. "In the past twelve days in Iran, we have witnessed more than one execution every four hours. This is unprecedented, even for the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is crucial that the international community reacts to this," says Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the spokesperson for Iran Human Rights.

"It is incomprehensible that the death sentences for prisoners with drug related charges are being hastily carried out at the same time that a bill is being reviewed by the Iranian Parliament to stop the death sentences for many prisoners with drug charges. It is possible that the Iranian authorities intend to carry out the death sentences for as many prisoners with drug related charges as possible before passing the bill. If this is the case, then we will be witness to a massacre."

Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam calls on the international community and civil societies inside and outside Iran to help prevent a massive human tragedy before it is too late by reacting to the wave of executions in Iran.

Previously, Iranian parliament members had requested from the Iranian Judiciary to stop drug related executions for at least five thousand prisoners pending further investigation. However, the request has not stopped the Judiciary from carrying out death sentences for prisoners with drug related charges.

Imprisoned for the last eight years of his life, his name erased from Chinese news reports and public records, Liu Xiaobo was a deliberately silenced man. But the Nobel Peace Prize laureate's death from liver cancer Thursday only intensified the public outcry over the causes he devoted his life to, as scholars, activists and governments around the world condemned Beijing for its treatment of the 61-year-old dissident.

U.S. lawmakers, human rights groups and democracy activists in China itself all weighed in on Mr. Liu's death, China's most famous political prisoner who succumbed quickly to his disease just weeks after his release from prison. The death also comes as the government of President Xi Jinping has made a conscious effort to boost China's "soft power" with such initiatives as the One Belt, One Road program and the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

Sen. Marco Rubio was one of a number of lawmakers on Capitol Hill sharply critical of Beijing's treatment of Mr. Liu.

"There should be an independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding Dr. Liu's death, his treatment in detention, the timing of the diagnosis of his late-stage liver cancer, and countless other questions that need to be answered," the Florida Republican said in a statement. "The Chinese authorities complicit in his unjust imprisonment and death should be immediately sanctioned and their assets frozen under" U.S. laws, he said.

President Trump, in a White House statement released Thursday evening, said he was "deeply saddened" by Mr. Liu's death, calling him a "political prisoner" who "dedicated his life to the pursuit of democracy and liberty."

Mr. Trump did not directly refer to China's treatment of Mr. Liu, but the White House earlier this week had called on Beijing to end the confinement for both Mr. Liu and his wife, so the ailing dissident could pursue the medical care of his choosing.

Suicide bombers killed 17 people and injured 21 in the northeast Nigerian city of Maiduguri, the police commissioner of Borno state said on Wednesday.

It is the latest in a spate of suicide bomb attacks on the city in the last few weeks. Borno, of which Maiduguri is the capital, is the Nigerian state worst affected by the eight-year-old insurgency by Islamist militant group Boko Haram.

Witnesses said four suicide bombers carried out attacks in the Molai district, which is around 5 kilometers from the city center, on Tuesday night at around 10:00 p.m. (2100 GMT). Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Damian Chukwu, the Borno state police commissioner said the suicide bombers were among the 17 killed.

Boko Haram, which has killed more than 20,000 people and forced some 2.7 million people to flee their homes in its bid to create an Islamic state.

The group has been pushed out of most of a swathe of land around the size of Belgium that it controlled in early 2015 by the Nigeria's army and troops from neighboring countries in the northeast Nigeria.

But insurgents continue to carry out suicide bombings and raids in northeast Nigeria, as well as in Cameroon and Niger.

The four Protestant Christian converts sentenced to 10 years in prison by the Revolutionary Court in Iran

Three Azeri men and one Iranian man, all Protestant Christian converts, have been sentenced to 10 years in prison by the Revolutionary Court in Iran, according to Mansour Borji, the advocacy director of Article 18, an organization that defends Christians in Iran.

No evidence was presented by the prosecution during the trial to show the defendants had acted against national security, Borji told the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).

He added that Judge Mashallah Ahmadzadeh of Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court-who has issued sentences ranging from five to 15 years in prison to 16 Christian converts since April 2017-referenced a report by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) during the trial.

The report was not included as evidence in the case files, Borji said, so the defense was unable to respond to its content.

Yusif Farhadov, Eldar Gurbanov and Bahram Nasibov from Baku in the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Iranian national Nasser Navard Goltapeh were arrested by security forces on June 24, 2016 at a reception hosted by their Christian friends in Andisheh, a suburb of Karaj, west of Tehran, according to Borji.

"The three Azeri Christian converts returned to Baku after being freed on bail, but Nasser is in Iran and he's worried about the outcome of the appeal," he added.

The four were accused of being "Zionist Christians" who "acted against national security with the intention of overthrowing the state in a soft war" and were all sentenced to 10 years in prison based on Article 498 of Iran's Islamic Penal Code by Judge Ahmadzadeh.

Article 498 states: "Anyone, with any ideology, who establishes or directs a group, society, or branch, inside or outside the country, with any name or title, that constitutes more than two individuals and aims to perturb the security of the country... shall be sentenced to two to 10 years imprisonment."

Christian converts in Iran are routinely subjected to arbitrary arrests and prosecuted on vague national security related charges in trials lacking due process and with evidentiary standards well below international standards.

"During questioning and the trial, the accused repeatedly said they had not done anything wrong," Borji told CHRI. "They only prayed and carried out Christian rituals at home-based churches [in their daily lives]."

Laurie Cardoza-Moore, president of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (PJTN) and Special United Nations Envoy for the World Council of Independent Christian Churches

"The World Council of Independent Christian Churches (WCICC) is calling on member states of the United Nations to defund the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in the wake of the passage of a resolution to declare the Cave of the Patriarchs and the Old City of Hebron to be World Heritage Sites in Danger, and under the authority of the Palestinian Authority government.

'Instead of protecting our shared history and values, UNESCO has become the mouthpiece for global Jew Hatred,' the organization said in its release. 'Their latest motion which suggests that Hebron and the Cave of the Patriarchs are Palestinian Heritage sites is both pathetic and offensive to history and the billions of Jews and Christians worldwide.

'There can be no place for such hatred within a world organization that exists to foster peace and understanding and protect history. It's time to defund UNESCO once and for all.'

WCICC represents more than 45 million Evangelical Christians around the world, and is represented at the United Nations by special envoy Laurie Cardoza-Moore, president of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (PJTN)..."